Merci, Monsieur le President. The review of mining royalties continues to grind along. Industry, Tourism and Investment released a discussion paper in February 2022. Public engagement closed at the end of July 2022, more than six months ago. A socalled "what we heard" report was finally released quietly during the Association for Mineral Exploration Roundup in Vancouver in late January.
The report attempts to summarize 13 submissions that appear to have been sent, 11 online and two written submissions. Those written submissions are actually appended and consist of a detailed 12page letter from Alternatives North and a twopage letter from the Chamber of Mines criticizing Alternatives North. No details are provided on any of the other submissions.
Three types of engagement seem to have been undertaken.
Submissions could be sent by email.
Requests could be made of ITI for meetings, and ITI initiated some "targeted engagement" which appears to have been 25 secret meetings with the mining industry.
There were also 21 different surveys open only to those holding prospecting licenses. No data from these surveys is compiled or presented in the "what we heard" report. It's not clear why these surveys were only open to those holding prospecting licenses.
Ironically, the first item in the report on the targeted engagement, those secret meetings with the mining industry, is called "transparency and confidentiality." Public trust and the need for a lot more public disclosure are mentioned. Again, rather ironic that this was discussed at meetings that ITI held secretly with the mining industry.
I tabled the presentations from those secret meetings I obtained under access to information last week. Then there is a classic statement that "the public release of total royalties and production information is not seen as an issue going forward." What? All we're going to get out of this royalty review is the public reporting of separate resource revenues for mining and petroleum?
Quebec already has a minebymine public disclosure of royalties paid. Many countries already release this kind of data as part of their public reporting and all we can do is separate mining and petroleum royalties? Mr. Speaker, I seek unanimous consent to conclude my statement.
Unanimous consent granted
Merci, Monsier le President. To be fair, the document only says that the views gathered will be thrown into a hopper and combined with some financial modeling and other research and analysis to form policy options for future regulations.
The Yukon government recently started its review of mining legislation being done collaboratively with Yukon First Nations. There is a discussion paper with policy options that I tabled in the House. Public meetings open to everyone, Mr. Speaker We could learn a lot from their better engagement process.
I will have questions later today for the Minister of mining on the status of the royalty regime review and when the public will be engaged again. Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Member for Frame Lake. Members' statements. Member for Nahendeh.
